Transfer Calls!

Welp, it looks like my time here in Concord has come to an end. I've only been here for one transfer, and it looks like that's it for me! I haven't really gotten to know it a TON yet, but I have grown attached to a lot of the people. Particularly the Plascencia family. They are so close to full reactivation and Elder Wride and I have helped their "Part-member-family" become less "Part-member". But the transfer has ended and I'm on to my next assignment!

Starting tomorrow, I'll be a Zone Leader in Oakland with Elder Castleberry. It's kind of a crazy call! I've already been companions with Elder Castleberry because he was my trainer fresh outa the MTC. But we're back together! It's exciting! :) I'm not entirely sure how to be a Zone Leader, but I'm sure he can train me fine. haha He's got some experience. Anyways! That was this week's transfer doctrine! A sister in my district also got called to be a Sister Training Leader! No surprise there.

Updates from this week include:

Exchanges with Elder Jensen from Montana!

We taught a "Preach My Gospel" class about relying on the spirit and it went AWESOME!

Got an oil change for our car. (I've had SO many problems with that car.)

That's all the big things for the week! We have a zone activity today, so I can't email for very long, but this next transfer should be pretty.... well... difficult... but I think I'm excited. I really enjoyed being a District Leader... I've heard that Zone Leaders have a much crazier schedule, and a lot more responsibilities. But I'll let you know how it's going next week once I get there and get comfortable. :) Wish me luck!

I'm not covering them anymore, but if you could still keep Pedro Ramirez in your prayers, that would be awesome! He's working towards his (hesitant) baptismal date, but is having a hard time deciding what he wants from religion in general. Thanks a lot!

Wish me luck!

Love you all!

My parents sent me this sweet "How to tie a tie" thing this week, and this was one of my favorites. Too bad it's illegal in my mission. :) haha

This is a card house we made this morning.

Elder Wride and I were both Elder Ah Hoy's companions at one point. He gave us both a "Lava-Lava"

This is the Sistrict I'm leaving right now. (plus a couple random members)

Jerry's Baptism and Other Stuff

First things first, a lot of y'all have been asking about Jerry. And I have good news! We were able to hold a double baptism on Saturday for "Josegerardo 'Jerry' Ramirez Plascencia" (age 10) and "Yahir Guzman Martinez" (age 14). And it was a total success! Jerry has been our investigator for about a month now, and he is incredible. His baptism went smoothly and his whole family attended! Including his Non-member father who has just invited us to start teaching him as well! So we are super excited to continue to work with Jerry and his dad, Pedro.

This last Sunday was pretty exciting. They asked me to give a talk again. And I decided to speak about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I spoke about Faith, Repentance, Baptism, The Gift of the Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End. I chose to speak about these basic topics because we had quite a lot of investigators come to church this week, including Pedro, who, although a very supportive father, has never been taught the things his Recent-Convert-Son has been taught about baptism. And seeing as his son was receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost that day, I thought he would benefit from a little bit of an explanation.

After Sacrament meeting, like 4 minutes before the next class started, a teacher asked us to teach a 15 minute lesson about the Priesthood with no prep time. (I like how everybody assumes that missionaries are always prepared to speak about any topic for any amount of time on command.) It was a little choppy, but we tried to speak more by the spirit than anything else, and I think it ended up alright. There's a scripture I love that talks about treasuring up the words in your heart continually... that way when people ask you to give talks the night before, or ask you to teach a lesson 4 minutes before, or you introduce gospel principles to strangers that seem interested, "the words will be given to you in the very moment what you should say."

Sunday was a testimony of that!

Our area is finally turning around for the better! We've seen so many miracles this week and we've officially resurrected a dead area. We're working with a few strong investigators and ironing out details of a few pending baptismal dates, but be sure to keep Pedro, Mirbel, and Marisol in your prayers! :)

Elder Wride and I click like a mouse. He's so fun, and we've seen a lot of cool miracles this transfer. We're starting week 5 of our 1st transfer together today.

Also, I get a new mission President this week! I'll meet him on my Year mark!!! :) (Thursday)

Super exciting, but I'll give you more update on him next week!

Love you all!

My main man Jerry!

My mission is beautiful!

Elder Wride is such a homie!

Me, Elder Wride, and Jerry getting ready for the big day

Elder Wride's planner cover

Note from my punk companion

Making calls after an appointment blew us off

Some recuperation from wisdom teeth cirugia

Look at this little guy!

Look at this other little guy!

This is when I crashed the car.....

And this is when I locked the keys in the car and had to call the mission office.